Re: The humbling reality of writing multi-page articles

Subject: Re: The humbling reality of writing multi-page articles
From: Jan Henning <henning -at- r-l -dot- de>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2002 13:35:58 +0200


>Obviously navigation is a important consideration. If people don't
>understand that there are multiple pages and how to access them, they're
>not going to get very far. I wonder what a good completion percentage
>is on this sort of thing? Anybody have comparative numbers? Any studies?

I don not have any numbers, but I suggest that you feel somewhat less humbled.

IMHO, the number you should look at is the percentage of readers who
looked at the second page and then went on to read the third page as well.

After all, many people look at Web pages because they come up in a search
engine or because they find the link somewhere and it sounds interesting.
When they then look at the page, they see that it does not really contain
what they are looking for and they go elsewhere.

So you are looking at a retention rate from page two to page three of
about two thirds. This does not sound bad given the context - surfing the
Web, many people do not expect to read long texts, and the ergonomics of
doing so on a computer screen are unfavorable.

Regards
Jan Henning


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Jan Henning
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References:
The humbling reality of writing multi-page articles: From: Darren Barefoot

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